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While ProGrade Digital is a new player on the scene, the founders of ProGrade Digital are veterans in the industry, from companies like Lexar and SanDisk, bringing their extensive expertise in design, development and manufacturing in creating top products.

Their focus as a company is on memory cards, card readers and workflow software. ProGrade Digital’s mission is to provide the highest quality professional grade digital memory cards and readers in the industry with a focus on imaging professionals. In this article, we’ll take a first look at their 64GB UHS-II SDXC Memory Card and their MICROSDXC DUAL-SLOT USB 3.1 reader, which I received from the company for review. Learn more about ProGrade here.

64GB UHS-II SDXC V60 Memory Card

This card is a UHS-II, U3, Class 10, V60, which translates to fast. The most interesting part to me is that V60 rating. This rating means that it has a minimum write speed of 60 megabytes per second, or 60 MB/s. This higher rating, compared to V30 which most of my current cards have, means that as the read and write speeds for recording video in cameras and drones increases, this card will be able to keep up. This means I can continue to keep using this card for a longer period of time, rather than having to replace it.

This card is also a microSDXC which means I can use it in my DJI drone, which requires a microSD form factor. By using the included full-sized SD UHS-II adapter, I can also use it in my cameras that require a full-sized SD card. Being able to use it in both gives me greater flexibility where I can use my cards when I’m in the field.

As for speed, it’s rated to read at up to 200 MB/s and write speed up to 80 MB/s. It comes in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities. If you need or want a faster version, ProGrade also makes a V90 version of this card which has a minimum write speed of 90 MB/s, read speeds up to 250 MB/s and write speeds up to 200 MB/s.

What does the UHS-II SDXC with the V60 and V90 minimum write speeds mean?

From the SD Association website, the V60 and V90 speed cards will be able to handle not only 4K video but also 8K video.

If you’d like to see if the card is compatible with your cameras, click the links below.

MICROSDXC DUAL-SLOT USB 3.1 Workflow Reader

The MicroSDXC Dual-Slot USB 3.1 Workflow (card) Reader is capable of transfer speeds of up to 1.25 GB/s. It also allows for both cards to be read at the same time, if you have a card in each slot. In addition, it has a magnetic base and comes with a metal plate you can attach to the top of your laptop or somewhere in your workspace or both, as a way of attaching it for ease of use and accessibility.

As a comparison, I used my current card reader which is a Kensington reader that has a microSD slot and is USB 3.0 compliant. These are the read and write speeds I’m seeing using Black Magic Disk Speed Test. I’m running this on my 2015 iMac and I let the tests run for several minutes to allow for the speeds to settle out. I’m using the same ProGrade Digital 64GB UHS-II SDXC Memory Card in each reader.

I was really pleased by how much faster the MicroSDXC Dual-Slot USB 3.1 Workflow Reader is than my older reader. This will reduce the amount of time it will take to transfer my video and photographs to my computer for processing.

Reliability is a big deal

The reliability of my cards is important and ProGrade Digital is all about reliability. From their website:

ProGrade Digital goes to great lengths to ensure all cards are individually tested down to each memory chip. This is a far more time-consuming and rigorous process than sample testing done by other card manufacturers. By the time our cards hit the market, they have gone through hours of testing. You can have the highest level of assurance that your card will perform flawlessly.

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Chris Anson is a photographer, videographer and FAA Part 107 drone pilot/camera operator working with media companies and individuals as well as producing his own stock photographs and videos. Chris loves to share what he knows and continues to learn and explore.

Hey Jim, If you are talking about the h.264 and h.265 codecs, that write to the microSD card, they have a data rate of 100 megabits per second, rather than 100 megabytes per second. So 100 megabits per second convert to 12.5 megabytes per second. So this card is very able to handle that data rate. They do make a V90 version if you want one. There is a link at the end of the article to the V90. I hope this helps.

Obviously, 64GB UHS-II SDXC Memory Card will be very useful and cost-effective for users. Thanks for the blog.

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